The practice doesn't stop when the brief ends.
The things that don't fit a category but feed everything else. Heritage research, visual art, rabbit holes at midnight. This is what the work comes from.
Where We Come From
An ongoing project to document and preserve my family's Teochew-Vietnamese history before it disappears with a generation. The research spans Cholon and District 5 in Ho Chi Minh City, Teochew temple and guild hall sites, the refugee experience, and the food rituals that carry memory better than documents do — cháo tiều, bánh bao, bột chiên. Compiled into a family history document written for my sons.
Taking shape as Family history document, research archive, and the novel Where There Is Tide
Goal Make sure my sons know where they come from.
Heritage Art Series
Two interconnected visual art series drawn from Vietnamese-Chinese heritage. The first — huí / nhường — is a set of minimal geometric works exploring the tension between return-to-self and yielding to others: a duality that runs through both Chinese and Vietnamese cultural identity. The second — Ăn cơm chưa? — pairs illustrations of culturally specific household objects with remembered Vietnamese phrases. Small objects, specific memories, the texture of a childhood.
Taking shape as Two visual series in progress — geometric minimal works and illustrated object studies
Goal Find a visual language for things that don't translate directly.
Fighting Styles
Background in Taekwondo and boxing. The late-night version of this is researching the history, biomechanics, and philosophy of fighting styles — how different martial traditions solve the same problems differently, and what that says about the cultures they came from. Also what led to building fight.me.
Vintage Audio Equipment
Vinyl collector. The rabbit hole version is vintage turntable forums, cartridge comparisons, the physics of analog playback, and why certain pressings from certain plants in certain years sound different from everything else. An expensive hobby made slightly less expensive by being very careful about research before buying anything.
Vintage Car Window Shopping
Dream car: 1972 Porsche 911. Current reality: a KTM 390 Duke and a lot of browser tabs. The automotive interest runs toward analog, characterful machines from the late '60s through the '80s — cars with a point of view. The window shopping is very thorough. The buying is very restrained.